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Overview

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale

In this final volume of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy, the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of the population. Toby is part of a small band of survivors, along with the Children of Crake: the gentle, bioengineered quasi-human species who will inherit this new earth.

As Toby explains their origins to the curious Crakers, her tales cohere into a luminous oral history that sets down humanity’s past—and points toward its future. Blending action, humor, romance, and an imagination at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Atwood—a moving and dramatic conclusion to her epic work of speculative fiction.

A New York Times Notable BookA Washington Post Notable BookABest Book of the Year: The Guardian, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, The Globe and MailA GoodReads Reader's Choice

About the Author

Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, her novels include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize; and The Year of the Flood. She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award, and lives in Toronto with the writer Graeme Gibson.

Reading Group Guide

1. Why are Adam and Zeb so different? Or are they more similar than they first seem?

2. The MaddAddamites set about building a basic community for themselves, one that meets the need for food, clothing, shelter, and an energy source. If you were in this position, would you do things differently? Should children be taught elementary survival skills?

3. What comment, if any, do you think Margaret Atwood is making about environmentalism in this book, through organizations like Bearlift? Or does Bearlift suffer simply from the human flaws that appear in all organizations, no matter how well-meaning?

4. The Internet has an almost physical presence in MaddAddam—the “lilypads,” the game Intestinal Parasites. Do you think this is where the Internet is heading? Is it becoming a “real” entity of its own?

5. Is Toby right to trust Zeb? Do you think his feelings for Toby are genuine?

6. Toby teaches Blackbeard to write. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? What consequences do you think this will have for the Crakers and their new world?

7. Margaret Atwood’s trilogy often portrays humans and our future grimly, but it is also both funny and profane. Is Atwood’s gallows humor effective?

8. What parallels do you see between the events of MaddAddam and recent events in our real world? Are Atwood’s three dystopian books exaggerated or could they really be our future?

9. Despite having seemed violent and disposed to eat humans, the Pigoons ultimately display more compassion than many of the humans in MaddAddam. Is that because the Pigoons are animals, or is it because of the implanted human tissue in their brains?

10. The Crakers seek stories from Jimmy and Toby to explain the world around them. What do these stories say about how myths are formed? Is the desire for religion innate within us? What do you think MaddAddam is saying about our need for gods and how religions are created?

11. How important is language in shaping and changing history and rumour into myth? Discuss the way gods form in Toby’s monologues to the Crakers—including the one named for a swear word?

12. Religion and our need for belief is a key concern in MaddAddam. What does the Church of PetrOleum say about Atwood’s view of religion? Has religion become a commodity?

13. How do you think the hybrid babies will turn out? Will they be more human or Craker, and which would be best for the future of Earth?

14. Is Atwood’s view of humanity ultimately negative? Is there hope at the end of MaddAddam, and if there is, where does it come from?

“Sardonically funny. . . . [Atwood] certainly has the tone exactly right, both for the linguistic hypocrisy that can disguise any kind of catastrophe, and for the contemptuous dismissal of those who point to disaster. . . . MaddAddam is at once a pre- and a post-apocalypse story.” —The Wall Street Journal

“The culmination of a satirical dystopian saga a decade in the making. . . . Full of adventure and intrigue.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“The imaginative universe Atwood has created in these books is huge. . . . It’s a dystopia, but it’s still fun.” —Los Angeles Times

“This third book of Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed near-future dystopian trilogy is its best. . . . Atwood presents a moving and convincing case for our stories’ continued existence long after we’re gone.” —The Seattle Times

“This novel sings. . . . Close attention to detail, to voice, to what’s in the hearts of these people: love, loss, the need to keep on keeping on, no matter what.” —The Miami Herald

“There is something funny, even endearing, about such a dark and desperate view of a future—a ravaged world emerging from alarmingly familiar trends—that is so jam-packed with the gifts of imagination, invention, intelligence and joy. There may be some hope for us yet.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

From the Publisher

What a joy it is to see Margaret Atwood taking such delicious pleasure in the end of the world…In MaddAddam, the third volume of Atwood's apocalyptic MaddAddam trilogy, she has sent the survivors of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood to a compound where they await a final showdown. But what gives MaddAddam such tension and light are the final revelations of how this new world came to be, and how the characters made their way to this battle for the future of humanity. Atwood has brought the previous two books together in a fitting and joyous conclusion that's an epic not only of an imagined future but of our own past, an exposition of how oral storytelling traditions led to written ones and ultimately to our sense of origin…Atwood's prose miraculously balances humor, outrage and beauty.

The New York Times Book Review - Andrew Sean Greer

The final entry in Atwood’s brilliant MaddAddam trilogy roils with spectacular and furious satire. The novel begins where Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood end, just after most of the human species has been eradicated by a man-made plague. The early books explore a world of terrifying corporate tyranny, horrifying brutality, and the relentless rape of women and the planet. In Oryx and Crake, the pandemic leaves wounded protagonist Jimmy to watch over the Crakers, a humanoid species bioengineered to replace humankind by the man responsible for unleashing the plague. In The Year of the Flood, MaddAddamites wield science to terrorize corporate villains while God’s Gardeners use prayer and devotion to the Earth to prepare for the approaching cataclysm. Toby, a God’s Gardener and key character in the second book, narrates the third installment, in which a few survivors, including MaddAddamites, God’s Gardeners, Jimmy, and the Crakers, navigate a postapocalyptic world. Toby is reunited with Zeb, her MaddAddamite romantic interest in Year of the Flood, and the two become leaders and defenders of their new community. The survivors are a traumatized, cynical group with harshly tested self-preservation skills, but they have the capacity for love and self-sacrifice, which in a simpler story would signal hope for the future of humankind. However, Atwood dramatizes the importance of all life so convincingly that readers will hesitate to assume that the perpetuation of a species as destructive as man is the novel’s central concern. With childlike stubbornness, even the peaceful Crakers demand mythology and insist on deifying people whose motives they can’t understand. Other species genetically engineered for exploitation by now-extinct corporations roam the new frontier; some are hostile to man, including the pigoons—a powerful and uniquely perceptive source of bacon and menace. Threatening humans, Crakers, and pigoons are Painballers—former prisoners dehumanized in grotesque life-or-death battles. The Crakers cannot fight, the bloodthirsty Painballers will not yield, and the humans are outnumbered by the pigoons. Happily, Atwood has more surprises in store. Her vision is as affirming as it is cautionary, and the conclusion of this remarkable trilogy leaves us not with a sense of despair at mankind’s failings but with a sense of awe at humanity’s barely explored potential to evolve. Agent: Phoebe Larmore, Larmore Literary Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

The compelling conclusion to Atwood's dystopian trilogy opens with a brief synopsis of the series' first two books, Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood, then launches directly into the story of the MaddAddamites, survivors of a global pandemic that wiped out most of humanity. Readers, even those unfamiliar with the human characters and the genetically engineered new species Atwood has created in her futuristic world, will be quickly drawn in and eager to find out what happens to the MaddAddamites and to the Crakers, a gentle, quasihuman species created by Crake. Their world is full of many dangers, including direct attacks from criminally insane Painballers and from pigoons, transgenic pigs developed to grow replacement organs for humans. Toby, Zeb, and the rest of the MaddAddamites are alive, but will they be able to continue not only to subsist but to build up their small society and, eventually, live alongside the Crakers and even flourish? VERDICT Certainly of great interest to Atwood fans awaiting this third book of the trilogy and for fans of dystopian/postapocalyptic fiction generally, this finale is a gripping read for any reader. [See Prepub Alert, 3/25/13.]—Shaunna E. Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA

Library Journal

Atwood closes her post-apocalyptic trilogy (Oryx and Crake, 2003; The Year of the Flood, 2009) with a study of a small camp of survivors, redolent with suggestions about how new-world mythologies are made. The main narrator, Toby, is a gatherer of strays at MaddAddam, an enclave of survivors of the previous years' plague and environmental collapse. Amanda was tormented by vicious "Painballers"; Snowman, the hero of Oryx and Crake, is recovering from a grotesque foot wound; and a small tribe of "Crakers," genetically engineered humanoids, are on site as well. Atwood's story moves in two directions. Looking backward, Toby's love, Zeb, recalls the history of the scientists who set this odd new world in motion while greedy evangelists like his father clung to rapidly depleting oil and cash reserves. Looking forward, the MaddAddamites must police the compound for Painballers out for revenge. As with many post-apocalyptic tales, the past is much more interesting than the present: Zeb's story is a cross sections of end-times North America, from Grand Guignol entertainments to pharmaceutical horrors, and Atwood weaves in some off-the-shelf contempt for casual sexism, consumerism and god-playing. In comparison, the closing confrontation between the MaddAddamites and Painballers is thin, though the alliances are provocative: The Crakers partner with large, genetically engineered pigs--pigoons--to help the surviving humans who unnaturally made them. In numerous interludes, Toby attempts to explain this world to the Crakers, and their dialogue, rife with miscommunications, is at once comic and strongly biblical in tone. Societies invent origin stories, Atwood suggests, by stripping off nuance for simplicity's sake. But Atwood herself has taken care to layer this story with plenty of detail--and, like most post-apocalyptic novelists, closes out the story with just a touch of optimism. By no means her finest work, but Atwood remains an expert thinker about human foibles and how they might play out on a grand scale.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Five Stars
MaddAdam is exactly what the followers of this trilogy were looking for. This book ties all the ends together for us. It&rsquo;s masterful, and
shows how well planned out this series was! I got the ARC on Netgalley and was planning to have my review up as soon as it was
released but I&rsquo;m so excited to finally have all my thoughts together.
O&amp;C really have us the basis to this story. We learn about Crake, and Jimmy and the whole world. Then we wait and wait, and finally
Year of the Flood comes in and we meet more characters, the gardeners, a whole bigger world. We experience things more
emotionally, it&rsquo;s stronger then O&amp;C and it hurts more too.
Finally, MaddAdam comes along, allow a final conclusion. It&rsquo;s a slow beginning but it picks right up where both books left off. Picks it up
and starts tying it together. Each strand has been previously addressed and now we&rsquo;re hearing the stories. The stories of Zeb, the
Stories of Adam, and the stories of Crake. We are finally getting all the little pieces to come to together and we start to have glimpses
of what the whole picture really looks like. We&rsquo;ve seen fragments, and some have been happy, others are sad, but we&rsquo;ve been awaiting
the full picture.
MaddAdam is similar to Year of the flood in the way it&rsquo;s broken apart by stories like YotF was broken apart by the feast days in Toby&rsquo;s
journal. I adore the idea of the folk tales, of the Crakes learning of themselves and of their world through these tales.
Overall, this novel was wonderful, made me sob like a baby with Margaret Atwood&rsquo;s amazingly emotional storytelling and reminded me
why I love her books so much. This is a stratifying conclusion to the whole trilogy, and though it&rsquo;s different, because it&rsquo;s told by different
people and in a different section of time, it still resonates clearly with both of the previous books, and keeps the story arch strong and
consistent! I really loved it, and am prepared to start all over again so it doesn&rsquo;t have to end.
** I was given this book through NetGalley as a reviewer. **

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I read O&C while on vacation in June and got After the Flood when I got back, which I promptly devoured. It drove me nuts that I had to wait until Sept. for the third book! I've just finished it and it was AMAZING! I laughed, I cried...no, really! I'm going to read it all again from the beginning. And continue to annoy my friends by telling them to READ THIS TRILOGY!

ProfessorB

More than 1 year ago

Atwood is one of my favorite authors and this trilogy is one of her most amazing works yet. Some people are foodies - I guess I'm a wordie - and her sensitivity to the nuance of words and language and human nature combined with her ability to use this skill to say something thought-provoking and perspective-changing leaves me simultaneously awestruck and inspired to write. So seldom do I feel changed after reading something anymore. With her writing, I feel I evolve.
That said, if you prefer tidy, uncomplicated stories with tidy, uncomplicated characters where the good guys always win and it is always clear who the good guys are - Atwood is not for you.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Fantastic alternate reality book that integrates a lot of interesting environmental and scientific issues.

Drewano

More than 1 year ago

This book follows the same format as the other two before it. A story line which takes you back through the past of one of the main characters (Zeb in this case) mixed with the happenings of the present. I found Zeb&rsquo;s story a bit more interesting than the rest but nothing that much more exciting that what was told in the past. All in all a good series which is interesting an a sci-fi way but if you&rsquo;re looking for more of a post-apocalyptic read where you see the end of the world this isn&rsquo;t really that type of book.

pregnantat40

More than 1 year ago

Love the series - must read them all! gimme more, more, more!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

... if a touch sad at the ending. I find it charmingly clever how Atwood creates a story about stories, and fits it, quite naturally, into a work of speculative fiction. This MaddAddam series finale does a great job of providing the reader closure, and is another fine example of the author's craft-mastery.
Thank you, Ms Atwood.
Goodnight.

Anonymous

8 months ago

I really enjoyed this series. It's whitty with an easy to read style. The themes covered are so close to what our future could hold it's eere.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I have said those words to so many people regarding Atwood's Oryx & Crake, Year of the Flood, and Maddaddam. There is just so much good here. This book stands out in the series for exploring the nature of language, storytelling, and culture, while also continuing to offer dark insight on the current state of affairs, a vivid imaginative world of the future, and incredible characters. Toby is fascinating, and this book provides the most development of her, Jeb, and Adam One. So... you have to read these books.

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